Drug-resistant tuberculosis a "time bomb," WHO chief says

The growing prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a "potentially explosive situation," the World Health Organization's director general, Margaret Chan, said today at the opening of a three-day meeting on the problem.

Representatives from 27 countries affected by multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) are gathering in Beijing to discuss how to address the trend. MDR-TB is resistant to first-line drugs; XDR-TB doesn’t respond to those meds or second-line therapies. More than 500,000 MDR-TB cases occur annually—only 3 percent of them treated according to WHO standards—and XDR-TB exists in more than 50 countries, the agency says. People with HIV, whose immune systems are already weakened by the AIDS-causing virus, are at increased risk of TB.

"Call it what you may—a time bomb or a powder keg," Chan said today, according to the Associated Press. "Any way you look at it, this is a potentially explosive situation."

Leo Vincant Jawili carries his wife, Decere Lai Jawili, to a taxi outside the International Center for Tuberculosis in Manila, Philippines, where she receives daily treatment for MDR-TB/WHO, Dominic Chavez